The first thing that came to mind when I heard about the mass shooting at the Super Bowl parade was, in the worst-case scenario, it might have been a terrorist attack.
We didn’t know for a while what had happened, only that there was gunfire and many injuries and a frantic, chaotic scene in Kansas City. We’ve been thinking about Super Bowls and the risk of terrorism since at least 1977 and the movie “Black Sunday,” which was itself inspired by the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
And there could hardly be a softer target than a parade, even with the massive amount of security on hand.
It turned out not to be terrorism, of course — at least not in the way we’ve come to define either foreign or domestic terrorist acts.
And yet, this shooting — in which at least one was killed and 22 injured, half of them under the age of 16 — was, of course, terrorizing. Hundreds of thousands of people at the parade fled in terror. An entire city, an entire region, several states and, for that matter, much of the country were terrorized.
As police have now indicated, the source of this terror was apparently two or more people involved in what has been called a personal dispute. Two juveniles were charged Friday with gun-related and resisting-arrest charges. Additional charges, we’re told, are expected. I don’t know how young the shooters are, but they’re currently in juvenile detention.
As happens so often in America, this personal dispute was being settled with guns. And what made this personal dispute involving guns different was that it took place in the midst of a huge celebration of a game that was watched by a record 123 million Americans.
We were shocked. But not shocked.
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Certainly no one in Colorado could be shocked. We remember the pre-parade mass shooting that followed the Denver Nuggets’ first NBA championship last June. In the downtown celebration, 10 were injured by gunfire. The police would later say that the violence involved a drug deal gone bad.
When I wrote a column after that shooting, the headline said, “It seemed that nothing could make the cheering stop in Denver. Then, all too predictably, something did.”
Who could possibly still be shocked by mass shootings or any other kind of gun violence? This mass shooting was the 48th of the young year, as counted by the Gun Violence Archive, which includes all shootings wherein four or more people are injured or killed.
As I write this, we’re up to 50 mass shootings, which, it turns out, is a three-year low for this date — and yet not low at all.
Homicides are down across the country, but not that far down. And in Kansas City, 2023 was a record year for homicides. And there’s this: The Super Bowl parade shooting was the 25th such shooting in Kansas City in the past five years.
What should be done? People are suggesting more than thoughts and prayers this time, although most GOP politicians seem to stick with that line. A few people are actually suggesting we should rethink having these massive celebratory parades because of the danger.
A better suggestion might be to rethink security arrangements. This was the third Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade since 2020, and the first in which there was gunfire.
As we know, parades aren’t the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Gun-safety advocates noted long ago the NRA’s rhetorical nonsense about guns not killing people. Now, we say — and it’s inarguable — that gun violence kills people. The Valentine’s Day Super Bowl mass shooting came, in fact, on the sixth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, where 17 were killed.
Nearly 19,000 were killed by gun violence in 2023, not including the 23,000 gun-involved suicides. We know all the statistics about the guns now owned privately in America — something approaching 400 million — and we know that Americans kill 26 times more people with guns than the average number killed in 29 high-income countries. We know, too, about Congress’ repeated inaction.
☀️ MORE FROM MIKE LITTWIN
You may have heard that gun-safety advocates are using AI to replicate the voices of those students who have been killed by gun violence and are bringing those voices to help lobby Congress. Do you think that will work? I wish I did. Do you think members of Congress haven’t seen the Washington Post study showing that more than 360,000 students have experienced gun violence since Columbine?
We know too much. We do too little.
In Colorado, we have produced gun laws, typically after a gun massacre somewhere in the state provokes action, and the legislature is now set to possibly consider another go at banning the assault-style rifles used in most mass killings. A similar bill died last year in the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. And Gov. Jared Polis is known to oppose the idea, saying that for any action to be effective, it needs to be nationwide.
Polis is right about that, but also very wrong. There are now 10 states that have restricted assault-style weapons. It’s a movement to which Colorado, particularly as a western state, could greatly contribute.
Missouri, meanwhile, has among the weakest gun laws in the country. The Giffords Law Center ranks Missouri 48th out of 50 states in gun-law strength and, not surprisingly, sixth in gun death rate.
It’s hard to be optimistic about gun violence and the chance that America will ever do anything significant about it. It was hard not to give up hope — and I’m sure many did — after 20 first graders were among 26 people gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary, only to see Congress refuse to take any kind of action.
The first column I can remember writing about gun violence was after the Opening Ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics when Ronald Reagan, who had survived an assassination attempt, gave his speech from behind a protective, bullet-proof window. Days before the Olympics, a man who had told his wife he was going out to hunt humans, had shot and killed 21 men, women and children in a McDonald’s in San Diego.
I asked in that column which was the real America, the one represented by the athletes on the Los Angeles Coliseum floor or the one represented by the massacre, the kind we still know too well, in a fast-food eatery.
The question still holds. The mass shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade was just one more reminder of the gun violence that we allow to terrorize our country. Just as the mass shooting after the Nuggets’ title was a previous reminder.
The problem is, we keep getting reminded over and over and over and over again, and yet so little, over and over and over and over again, ever seems to change.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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